Can I share backups between my product and test environments? (4226912)

Can I share backups between my product and test environments?

What are the possible complications involved in sharing a TPAM backup between my production and dev or UAT environment?

It is not recommended to share a backup between your Product and Dev or Test environment. A TPAM backup contains all the information that is stored in the database. In addition to all of the Systems, Accounts, Users etc. that you have created, the backup also includes much of your configuration, such as the Cluster member information.

The main reason for this is to due to Cluster communication problems that can be caused by restoring a a backup from one Primary to another Primary. In effect, this will create a clone of the original Primary by copying it's identity onto the second Primary.  If the second Primary is able to communicate over the network with the Replicas that are enrolled on the first Primary, then the Replicas will not be able to determine which appliance is authoritative and it was cause cluster replication to fail. It will also likely require the Cluster to be rebuilt.

The best practice recommendation is to maintain completely separate Cluster configuration in each environment. As long as the Clusters are created independently, then they will have unique identification information which will prevent confusion between the members of each Cluster.

If for some reason it is required to restore a backup from one Cluster to another, then you will need to ensure that network communication is blocked between the 2 environments.